Once-Secret East, West German Spy Cameras Now on Auction

East and West German spy cameras, long among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, went on the auction block here Friday.

The pride of a collection of rare and unusual photographic equipment was a fully automatic camera from the workshop of East Germany’s Stasi security police, apparently sold by one of the thousands of employees after the collapse of communism.

“We don’t know the exact origin,” Uwe Breker of the Auction Team Koeln auction house said. “Someone walked in off the street and sold it to one of our suppliers who has a shop in Alexanderplatz.”

In contrast, West Germany’s intelligence service was represented at the auction, however unwittingly, by a James Bond-style miniature camera disguised as a digital watch.

The bulky 35-millimeter Stasi camera, without any markings except the English words “German Democratic Republic” on its 50-millimeter and 200-millimeter lenses, was offered with remote and radio-control devices. It holds enough film to take 250 photographs.

“It would have been mounted on an observation point near a building such as West Germany’s mission,” Breker said. “It could have been triggered by an infrared device every time a door opened or set to take photographs at regular intervals.”

The camera attracted police attention Thursday. Breker said an officer of the Federal Criminal Office demanded to know where it had come from and tried to prevent it from being auctioned.

“We showed him our receipt and told him the auction would go ahead,” Breker said.